Last night was about 72 hours long. As least it felt that way. It didn't help that it was absolutely pouring down rain much of the night which makes it pretty impossible to do anything proactive at all. I intensely dislike patrolling in heavy rain--what's the point? It's not like you can see anything, and you're smoking crack if you think I'm going to make traffic stops in the rain. We were in Lacombe last night,so we tried to hang out at the substation, but the big problem with that is that our brand-spanking new $8 million radio system has shitty reception in Lacombe and darn near none inside the substation, and it's kinda Not Good to stay in a place where you can't hear your radio.

But that dilemna got solved for us when we got dispatched to an accident. So we got to stand out in the pouring rain and flag traffic until that mess could be cleared up. I was soaked from the knees down, as well as having big wet spots on my front and shoulders where the raincoat didn't quite cover. But once you're soaked it's not so bad standing out in the driving rain. In fact it was kind of cool watching the rain strike and slide off of the asphalt, and even more fascinating to watch the rain get frozen in place in midair in red and blue sparkles from the strobes of the police cars.

And the rest of the night draaaggggged. We kept having to stop under sheltered spots to get out and stamp our feet and try and wake up. We kept looking at our watches and groaning in dismay at the amount of time left before the end of the shift. Even when the rain let up there was nothing to do because there was no one out on the streets. We finally gave up and went back to the main station an hour earlier than we were supposed to--and upon arriving found that everyone else was going through the same struggle to stay awake.

The weather is supposed to be clearer but much colder tonight, which means that I will most likely put my long underwear on under my uniform pants tonight. And, hope that it is already cool by the time I leave for work so that I don't sweat to death in the first few hours of the shift.

But I know that if I don't wear my longies, I'll get stuck standing on the side of the road somewhere freezing my ass off in non-wind-resistant polyester pants.